Separating the art from the artist is an age old debate, one that has been reignited in recent years after the tidal wave of MeToo revelations that many public figures and artists have used their public profile to victimize with impunity. Even artists whose disturbing misdeeds were known to the public for many years (Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, etc.), were being viewed through a new lens. In her most recent book, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, critic Claire Dederer attempts to understand how to be a consumer of art in the new age, when we’re extra aware of this additional layer of moral choice in consumption.
The central question of this book is one that every reader will have a different but strong reaction to, and I am no exception. I am in awe of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, I love the humor and anachronistic visuals of Woody Allen films, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is one of my favorites, and Miramax has produced many films that changed my understanding of what cinema can accomplish. I have complicated feelings about all of these properties, not the least of which being that I encountered many of these pieces of work when I myself was a fairly impressionable teen girl. I feel protective of that younger girl who was just beginning to discover her passion for film and literature, but also deeply sad and angry on behalf of the many girls whose lives were marred by violence and whose attackers continued without consequence based on the merits of their art.
Dederer works to hold that nuance, the special tension for a female consumer who is put in a more precarious position than the male critic, who can seamlessly align themselves with the troubled genius. Dederer does acknowledge that bad artists do not follow the gender binary, there are plenty of women with public profiles who harmed the people around them – and works to understand how challenging it is for people to reconcile art that made them feel less alone in the world being created by someone who had little regard for other human lives. I was less convinced by her theory that the ultimate bad female artist is a bad mom, but appreciated the effort to understand the different ways that artists can be selfish and harmful, and what it means to consume their work.
The book isn’t just centered on the most obvious bad artists like rapists and predators, but also figures like J.K. Rowling: people who’ve created transcendent work that reached the hearts of millions of fans, who’ve muddied the waters by expressing bigoted and hateful opinions that alienate many of the people who found solace in their work in the first place. Many artists, male and female alike, have used the platform they’ve earned through the adoration of fans to turn around and express opinions that confuse and anger those fans. As Dederer points out, the way that fans have learned to craft their identities around art that speaks to them makes this issue so much more complicated, and it becomes a question of separating not only the art from the artist, but the self from the artist.
Dederer sums up her ambiguous thoughts: “You do not need to have a grand unified theory about what to do about Michael Jackson….The way you consume art doesn’t make you a bad person, or a good one. You’ll have to find some other way to accomplish that.” The book aptly steers clear of moral relativism, while simultaneously acknowledging the complicated nature of its central question. The fan does have a moral responsibility to do good in the world, but that responsibility does not have a 1:1 relationship to the art that they consume. Dederer is thoughtful in maintaining a personal and humanistic bend to her criticism, which makes the book a more apt manual for how to be a fan than a textbook work of art criticism. This book is helpful for anyone who consumes art of any type, even just as a meditation on the intersections of morality and art, and a reminder that everything is subjective.